POEM QUOTED HERE PER KERRI'S SUGGESTION

Kerri, whose blog "Siabra" is so worth visiting, had a suggestion today. She said to pick up the book nearest you, open it to page 73 and quote the third line in our blogs. I did that and found this: "...and would have dinner at one or another of our houses..." The book is Joan Didion's The Year Of Magical Thinking. I wasn't going to quote it at all as it hardly seemed worthwhile, but go to what I mention in the next paragraph and then realized Kerri probably had a very specific reason for the request.

I remembered a poem Didion quoted in the book which had been compiled by her husband right after his younger brother's suicide. I decided it was far more important for me to quote this poem as I wanted it always near me to ponder upon.

I quote it below. It is on page 32 and is by Gerard Manley Hopkins, who is now counted among the leading Victorian poets.

O the mind, the mind has mountains; cliffs of fall
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap
May who n'er hung there.
I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.
And I have asked to be
Where no storms come.

My mind quakes at these words but somehow they give me comfort.